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Baltimore's school lunches reveal the city beneath the riots

April 28, 2015 - Baltimore, MD, U.S. - Two residents embrace in a Baltimore intersection that had been the site of looting the previous night. During a night of outrage sparked by the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray in police custody, the city saw more than a dozen building fires, nearly 200 arrests, and 19 injured police officers.

A new law would help those kids get free school lunches. It passed the Maryland state Senate and House unanimously —such is the consensus about the depth of the issues among the poorest people in the country's richest state.

But Maryland Governor Larry Hogan hasn't had time to sign the bill into law. Instead, he has been dealing with a state of emergency in Baltimore as authorities seek to quell unrest that followed the funeral of Freddie Gray, whose death at the hands of city police sparked widespread unrest. Nearly 2,000 National Guardsmen and 1,000 police are on their way to Baltimore.

The issue of free school lunches loomed quietly over the riots in Baltimore on Tuesday, as a symbol — and a casualty — of the people suffering in the lockdown that followed violence, armed police lines and fires on the inner city's streets. Streets were cordoned off and schools closed, leaving thousands of children suddenly out of much-needed meals.

To get free meals to the schoolchildren with nowhere to eat, community members and churches organized online to deliver free meals using the hashtag #Baltimorelunch. The effort is only a stopgap.

'They don't know how to express what they are feeling'

The need for a bill making school lunches more available is inextricably linked to the despair in Baltimore that erupted into unrest. The statistics bear out that a large group of Baltimore residents face a hard reality of unemployment, hunger and health issues — a hopelessness that takes little to translate into violence on the streets.

Brittany and Brandon Ross, 24-year-old twins who live in West Baltimore, said they had taken part in protests over Gray’s death in recent weeks and noticed that many young people were out on Monday.

“You see they did this because they are feeling hopeless," said Brittany Ross. "And they don’t know how to express what they are feeling."

Race is intertwined with Baltimore's trouble, forming invisible barriers across the city's neighborhoods.

Sandtown-Winchester, the neighborhood of Baltimore in which Freddie Gray grew up, is 97% black with nearly half of all children living below the poverty line, according to the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance. Inner Harbor, a far wealthier part of the city, is 80% white.

The police force represents another racial line. White people make up about 28% of Baltimore's population but 46% of its police force.

A map of racial and ethnic division in Baltimore. Red is white, blue is black, green is Asian, Orange is Hispanic

Wealth disparity in Maryland

Maryland is far from a poor state. Baltimore County, which surrounds the city, is known for its pleasant suburban neighborhoods of large lawns and comfortable living. In the tree-lined neighborhoods of Bethesda and Montgomery County, many of the power brokers of Washington D.C. return home to large, quiet homes. The Old Line State has the highest median income and the most millionaires of any other state. Three of the top five richest neighborhoods are also in Maryland, close to Washington D.C.

Yet, that little detail — the school lunches — tells the story of sharp income disparity. Focus on the poorest sections and the vast gap — in money, in power, even in food — gets worse. In Sandtown-Winchester, 93% of students qualify for free or reduced school meals.

Michael Wilson, director of the nonprofit Maryland Hunger Solutions, has seen the state's poverty problem firsthand.

"Maryland is a complicated state. It's got the highest per capita income of any state in the country. And yet at the same time, we've got this disparity with having real poverty here," he said.

By just about any metric, the poorest parts of Baltimore are especially brutal.

Ben Orr is the executive director of the Maryland Center on Economic Policy. A Baltimore resident, he said his drive to work reminds him of his time living in St. Louis, another city that experience an explosion of protest and unrest following the death of a black man from police action.

He noted that it's not just in cities where these issues persist. Ferguson, he added, is a suburb of St. Louis, and suburbs tend to be underestimated when it comes to poverty.

"There are the same levels of vacant buildings. There are the same problems with access to fresh fruits and vegetables in many of our communities. There are the same problems with hunger," Orr said.

Food deserts and food swamps

Hunger isn't just about poverty; it's about the quality of the food available. About 20% of all Baltimore residents live in "food deserts," in which the nearest grocery stores are often miles away and poor-quality or rotting fruits and vegetables are available at corner stores. These are most often found in low-income areas. On top of that, there's also what Wilson termed "food swamps," in which residents only have access to fast food and other unhealthy options.

Image: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

These conditions occur in many other cities across the U.S., but Orr noted that poor people in Maryland face a particular challenge — employment. More than half of the people aged 16 to 64 in Sanford-Winchester are either unemployed or not in the labor force.

Here again, Maryland's inequality is evident. The state is known for industries like health care that require advanced education, Orr said. Furthermore, finding jobs that don't require a degree often require people to travel long distances when they're able to find employment at all.

The city of Baltimore's high school graduation rate has improved recently, but at 68.5% remains well below the state and national average.

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